Friday, January 14, 2005

This movie is a corny, melodramatic assault on people with disabilities. It plays out killing as a romantic fantasy and gives emotional life to the "better dead than disabled" mindset lurking in the heart of the typical (read: nondisabled) audience member.

That's the truth and we need to deal with it. It explains why movies such as Whose Life is it, Anyway? become immensely popular. It explains why The Sea Inside was such a hit with critics. These are the stories about disability that society wants to believe are true. And critics are part of society.

These films don't reflect the typical disability experience, which, for most of us, is just the experience of living our lives. Books and movies about our simple struggle to live life in an oppressive society receive little notice from the public, press or critics. It's only when a disabled person, real or fictional, says they want to die that the movie becomes a hit, the book a bestseller.

I'm not familiar enough with the disability genre to know if that last line is true or not, but maybe some day someone will make a film about Christopher Reeve's life, or Stephen Hawking.